Whole and Living
by Lasgalendil
Summary: With her husband gone, Elizabeth has decisions to make...but is the Pirate King strong enough to overcome her own despair? Almost Barbossabeth, please read and review.


A final kiss, a sudden flash, a shooting star like the sinking sun across the horizon, staining the sky and waters a vivid, poisonous green…

Then he was gone.

_He was gone_. And there she was, sitting alone in the growing dark, obeying his last request with numbed eyes grown too weak for weeping: a weather eye on the horizon. It grew cold. She hugged her knees close, laid her head against the rough, splintered surface of the Dead Man's Chest, and imagined somehow that it's cold, hard surface was a warm embrace, rising and falling underneath her…

She was alone, with nothing more than the borrowed clothes on her back, a borrowed sword, a set of pistols, and an ebony casket of wood. Her father was dead, James was dead, her _husband_-here she blanched-was gone, and she had nothing but this one charge left to her, and a promise to meet again, on this very spot, in ten years.

_Ten years_.

Ten years ago she had crossed from England as a child.

In so much time, she had been both orphaned, married, and abandoned…

I don't even have a place to _live_, she thought, watching the rising tide ebbing over the sand in the moonlight. Desperation turned quickly to despair in the deepening dusk, and with every wash of every wave she wondered if she even wanted to

It would be easy, taking off the clothes as gently as Will had, sliding the linen trousers down her long legs, unbuttoning the mother of pearl clasps over her breasts, then wading, wading down in the moonlit surf until it reached her head, surrendering to its eternal, enthralling embrace…

She didn't need to wait ten years to see him again. If she wanted, he was only a short walk away. But shivering, cowering in the cold, overwhelmed by her loneliness , she had not the strength for either.

How long she had lain there she did not know, but the moon had risen and the tide had lowered when she was startled from her silent, tearless vigil.

"It be cold tonight, missy, make no mistake," a rough hand on her head raised her languid, aching eyes to its jaundiced tinge and grey mottled nails. A day ago it had been her commanding voice, her strength of spirit that held 500 men and women to their posts in the face of certain death, her pride and her fury that stood a test of ancient, heathen powers and Her Majesty's Navy, the crowning jewel of the Seas….but not now.

The greying hand belonged to no other than Captain Hector Barbossa, Lord of the Caspian Sea, once her kidnapper and tormenter, and now here she was, alone, helpless, at his every mercy. He could kill her easily…If he would only be so merciful. He would use her, first, use her as he had always intended on their brief voyage aboard _The Pearl_ together.

The warrior in her could have sprung to life, whipping the sword from its pearled scabbard and stood at the ready: those amazon's arms had yet to be tested against Barbossa's blade but they were aching for the taste of steel, and that vengeful valkyrie would never surrender, defying death and laughing all the while…

But that spirit had gone.

The hand in her hair caressed the top of her head, running down the length of her touseled locks. Another ringed hand reached down for her, encircling her waist. She was too numbed, too weak to care. _What you are about to do…do so quickly…_

The sharp, flat edges of his nails found her face, and she felt their prick against the tender skin of her neck, raising her chin to face him as he stood her on her tiny feet. Her eyes reluctantly found his, sullen, resigned, loathing and longing for death. But the light, the light in his flecked green eyes was warm and familiar, and from her stupor of misery and fear curiousity crept.

That look was like, like-

Jack Sparrow's dark, taunting, beguiling eyes, alive with fire and lust, playful, teasing…no, the light was nothing like that…the petulant, adoring gaze of Will Turner, touching her gently, reverently, lost in his love…no, before…_Before._

The scars erased and the pockmarked, sun-beaten, weathered skin became paler yet more hale, the coarse, scratchy beard disappearing…and the eyes…the gentle eyes of Weatherby Swann, her father's eyes, looking down on her, pools of worry and concern, of comfort and safety.

"Mrs. Turner," He began, his tone soft and reassuring, his touch a father's embrace, his arms a solid shelter, a fortress against the cold onslaught of misery and dark, despairing dreams…

Pressed against his breast, every echoing heartbeat loud and living in her ears, her misery welled up inside of her and her trembling hands balled into quaking fists in his coat, the dull ache of her heart and throat becoming a throbbing, bleeding roar—a roar that erupted into her mouth and the cold night air as she screamed her pain and anger, her love and loss into the surety of his unending embrace.

Hector Barbossa, Blackheart, Betrayer, Murderer and Mutineer stood whole and living in the moonlight, pressing her contorted, tear-strewn face against his chest until she cried no more.


End file.
